Tuesday, January 1, 2013

New York Times Science Times Article

In today's Science Times section of The New York Times, there is an article: Motor Skills May Predict Success in School. The article coincides with core concepts from my model, The Homework Trap. Here is my comment on that article:

The concepts
raised here are extremely important in understanding why many seemingly bright
children fail to do well at school. But first, let me draw a distinction
between the types of motor deficits raised in this article. The article seems
to blend weight, exercise, and athleticism with other motor deficits, such as
handwriting and shoelace tying. I don’t know about the former, but the problems
with fine-motor coordination are central to understanding the difficulties many
children have at school. Here’s the connection and here’s what needs to be
done.

Poor handwriting
affects work pace, and impacts the child from elementary school on. In class,
the effect is limited because the school day is bound by the clock. Regardless
of how quickly the child works, the bells rings and the child goes home.
Further, the teacher is present so, regardless of what that child was able to
do, the teacher observed the effort, could come over to offer assistance, or
even waive parts of the assignment and accept what was done.

At the end of
the school day, the child is expected write down the assignments from the
board, with the expectation that he’ll get the work done.

Even if that
child can read what wrote down, he is now in a setting with no bell to end the
homework day. The teacher is not there, leaving the parent in the role of frustrated
taskmaster. Before long, parents and teachers talk, operating on the
misconception that the child is unmotivated, failing to see the difficulties
caused by the handwriting problem. Faced with unrelenting pressure, the child
acts out, and gets turned off to school.

This child needs
time-bound assignments, penalty reductions, and for his parents to have
authority to limit what he does.

I don’t know if
there is another neurological explanation that connects handwriting
difficulties with educational problems, but I am certain that unrelenting
demands for homework to get done by handwriting deficient children over twelve
years of schools is a setup for disaster that essentially robs them of an
education.